Strings
by the ticking clock
Summary: Natasha is afraid of Clint Barton.


**Who's excited for Age of Ultron? **

**This is messy and quick and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I am drowning in feels. So there. **

Natasha has always been afraid of Clint Barton.

At first, it had been a real, genuine terror. He'd stared her down the shaft of an arrow, his hands steady and firm and his gaze like ice. She hadn't pleaded, because begging for mercy is not something the Black Widow does, but she'd hoped. She might have whispered something like, "I'm sorry, you don't have to do this."

He'd stared at her, cocked his head, and then said, "fuck this," and lowered his bow.

She'd been even more terrified, then. "What are you doing?"

"Something seriously stupid," he had said, and grinned.

* * *

><p>When he'd taken her back to SHIELD, Fury had stared at her for exactly three minutes in stoney silence before he said, "Well, then."<p>

"Yes, sir," Clint said, nodding, as if this kind of procedure was completely normal.

Natasha had said nothing. She was steeling herself for blows and interrogation and torture. She was not wanted here. They wanted her dead. Every nerve in her body was screaming, run.

Fury leveled his one good eye on her. "Well, Black Widow," he said, "what can you give us?"

The word came from her lips without her consent, "information."

The spy nodded. "Alright then. Start talking."

* * *

><p>Clint was not an easy person to trust.<p>

But they were partners, and after he saved her life ten times, Natasha had to admit, she liked him. He wasn't soft, but the world had not completely broken him, either.

He saved her.

She saves him.

He saved her, and he saves her, and he keeps on saving her every minute of every day.

Is that what love is?

* * *

><p>The first time he had said he loved her, she turned him away.<p>

"Love is for children," she'd snapped.

He'd laughed in her ear. "Then let's be children."

* * *

><p>Natasha is afraid of Clint Barton.<p>

She loves him, and the thought terrifies her.

With Loki, the knowledge that Clint could break her, fight her, end her in the most terrifying and intimate way, paralyzed her. He knew every inch of her, every move she would make before she made it.

But she knew him too.

So when she ran to fight him, it was with the knowledge that she could go to her death. Which was laughably ironic, considering the circumstances of their first meeting.

* * *

><p>Natasha is afraid of Clint Barton.<p>

At night, when he wakes up screaming, his whole body arching and tensing under her hands, the whites of his eyes flashing in the darkness, she holds him. He shudders in her arms and whispers, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," over and over again.

He calls out for her in his sleep.

Sometimes he screams for Loki too.

The sound of the trickster God's name next to hers, whispered in the same fevered breath, chills her to the bone.

But she holds him anyway. She strokes back his hair, tangles her fingers in it. She presses kisses along his scars and whispers nonsense Russian into his ear, close enough and loud enough so he can hear.

When he sighs and pulls away, she lets him go, so just their pinky fingers are twined together against the sheets. She watches the slow rise and fall of his chest as he drifts back to sleep, and wonders how in the world she ended up here.

* * *

><p>The kick of a gun in her hand and Clint's voice in her ear are all she needs in a fight.<p>

As the building explodes behind her, she takes off running. The smoke is heavy in her lungs and thick in her mouth and she coughs until it burns her throat. Her ears echo with the repercussions of the explosion: first a sharp ring, and then a dull hollowness that sounds all to familiar. Natasha shakes her head, quickly, in an attempt to clear her ears, but the com hisses with static and she growls, readjusting it.

"Nat, do you copy?" Clint's voice is low and worried. Her eyes search, and find him, crouched on the roof of the building to her left.

"Copy," she says between coughs, and ducks into an alley to catch her breath.

"Everything go okay in there?"

She is not in the mood for a mission report. "The building blew up, Barton. People died. I got out."

"Okay," he says, after a few seconds. "Dinner and a movie tonight?"

He knows not to push.

Leaning her head back against the cold bricks of the alley, she huffs a laugh, "How bold."

"Is that a yes?"

"Get me out of here alive, and it just might be."

His warm laugh is a relief in her ringing ears.

* * *

><p>She wakes up to something cold against her head.<p>

"Don't move," Clint snaps. He leans over her briefly, a blur of drawn eyebrows, blue eyes and bloodstains, "I've almost stopped the bleeding."

Natasha closes her eyes because the world won't stop spinning, and says, "are you hurt?"

"Me?" Clint asks. She can hear the smile in his voice. "Nah. Stark got me out in time. You decided to run back into the burning building, though."

"Stark?"

"He's fine. Drinking, now, probably, but Banner's with him."

He is cleaning her side with something that stings. She wants to slap his hand away, but manages to only flick her fingers briefly over his.

"Hey, stop that," he scolds. "I"m trying to save your life, Romonaff."

She really can't argue with that.

* * *

><p>They have code words.<p>

Coulson had tried to figure them all out, once, but gave up when they reached the thousands. They have words for everything: jokes, casual phrases, dire situations, dying, pleas for help, favorite restaurants...

After the Winter Soldier and HYDRA, and running across the DC with Steve, she'd called Clint, and said, "Hey, so my mom is in the hospital with an asthma attack, can you come by?"

Which meant, _I am in real trouble and you need to get here NOW. _

He calls back two hours later, when she is trying to wash the blood out of her gear in a hotel sink and is continuously getting distracted by things like the fact that three black vans just pulled into the parking lot and the room next door is watching Sesame Street in French and everyone and anyone might be an enemy.

"What the hell is happening?" is the first thing he says. He's furious and scared, but she is angrier.

"Where are you?" She asks, taking a deep breath and making her voice perfectly flat so he knows she is being serious.

"Japan," he says immediately. "Where are you? What the hell is happening?"

"Japan?" She laughs. "Why did Nick send you to Japan?"

"Why does Fury do anything? You still haven't answered my question."

"I need you," she says, and it is a whisper so small she isn't even sure it's real. Maybe it's a stray thought. A hope. "I need you to come here."

She is rarely so open with him. He is quiet for the span of several seconds. Natasha clutches the phone and listens to him breathe.

"Natasha," he says, finally, "tell me what happened."

She manages to make it halfway through the story before she starts crying.

"Hey, hey," he says, gentle, "I'm right here. I 'mean, I'm across the world, but you can still hear me right?"

Natasha laughs through her tears and turns the sink on stronger so the room next door won't hear, and then buries her face in a pillow and _screams. _

There's been a scream building in her chest for the past couple of days, and it's raw and terrified and it rips from her throat with ferocity.

"Feel better?" Clint asks, softly, once she is finished.

"A bit," she says, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

"I need to go pick up the pizza," Clint says, which is might be their must ridiculous code phrase, which means, _I'm coming home soon. _

"Thank you," Natasha whispers, and neglects to mention that she really doesn't know where home is anymore.

* * *

><p>Natasha is afraid of Clint Barton.<p>

She is afraid of the hold he has over her. She is afraid of how much he knows. She is afraid of what she knows about him. She is afraid that one day he will die before her. She is afraid that he will leave. She is afraid of her own emotions.

Natasha loves Clint Barton.

He loves her.

He tells her this on missions, he tells her this when they are lying in the dark together, bodies tangled up so she can't tell who's leg is who's or where she starts and he begins. He tells her when they are laughing at some stupid movie and she swears in Russian. He tells her when she dances on her toes across the room. He tells her when she wakes up crying at three am. He tells her when she holds him in the dark. He tells her when she wins a fight and they lock eyes across the battlefield, all smoke and adrenalin and fiery nerves. He tells her when it matters most, and when it doesn't.

They are tangled up in each other's strings, bound together through broken promises and code words and debts odd and debts paid. They are partners, but something more. Natasha doesn't have a word for them. They are Clint and Natasha. Black Widow and Hawk Eye.

He has saved her life so many times, in so many ways.

She loves him.

Sometimes, she whispers it to herself, alone in the dark, tasting the words so they are true, _I love him. _

Even the Black Widow has a heart.


End file.
